Part 8

He thought no more of the thunder and the lightning up in the sky. He knew well that it was the electric spirit that struck sparks up there and he wanted him to do the same in his workshop. Since he had begun the work with the magnetic iron, he no longer troubled about the glass tube and the amber and the sulphur ball. He did not even care to rub them any more, so small was the spirit when he came from them and so soon did he disappear again.

“The lightning also lasts only for a moment,” said his disciple. “It is mighty, Father Two-Legs, a thousand times mightier than any spark that you can rub out of the sulphur ball; but it only flames for a moment and then it is all over.”

“That’s just why I can’t use it,” said Two-Legs. “I want the lightning to last as long as I please ... for ever if I please. I must be able to kindle it and extinguish it and kindle it again, as easily as I can snap my fingers. Oh, if I only knew where the spirit really dwelt!”

“We know that,” said the disciple. “He lives in the amber and in the glass tube and in the sulphur ball, in iron and in the thunder-cloud and in me and in you and in everything in the world, you said.”

Two-Legs sat long and pondered with his head in his hands. His disciple waited in silence; and, at last, Two-Legs looked up:

“You know ... you know ...” he said and then was silent again for a while.

Then he said:

“You know ... sometimes I don’t believe at all that the spirit lives in any of the places that you say.”

“Where does he live then, Father Two-Legs?” asked his disciple.

“I believe he lives in the air,” said Two-Legs. “Not in the clouds, which are mere water and vapour, but in the pure air ... in the ether: the ether, do you understand? He lives there and goes now into one and now into the other and rather into the one than into the other. Do you remember how long we had to rub the glass before the spirit came? He was there reluctantly. Do you remember that, when the glass was wet, he did not come at all? He would sooner be in the water. He likes to dwell in iron and copper and zinc and silver and all the other metals. In the string that held the kite which we sent up into the thunder-cloud, he ran down as fast as the lightning and sent a spark into my finger. You know how he runs down the wire of the lightning-conductor into the ground. He remains there because the ground is moist. That is why you and I see no more of him, because we walk on the ground: he runs right through us into the ground and disappears. Yes, that’s how it is, that’s how it is!”

His eyes beamed. He could not explain it, but he saw, as in a vision, that this was how it must be. He went on talking about it; and his disciple knew that it was true, even though he could not understand it.

But then Two-Legs grew sad again:

“What is the use of it all, when I cannot even produce the spirit,” he said, “nor build him a house in which he would rather dwell than anywhere else in the world, so that I may always have plenty of him to come and go at my pleasure?”

He began to gaze at his magnetic needle: how two north ends or two south ends always repelled each other, while a north end and a south end immediately flew together.

“Now, if there were two spirits,” he said, “if the spark came and then the two rushed towards each other, if the powerful force were just the attraction of one for the other ...”

“Is that it?” asked the disciple.

“I don’t know,” said Two-Legs. “I could see and feel the wind; and the same with Steam. I discovered, at length, where he came from and where he was going. But I don’t know what the mighty spirit of electricity is, for all the years that I have been watching him. Perhaps I shall never come to know. But we will explore his ways nevertheless, diligently, by day and by night.”

He hammered wires of iron and zinc, of copper and silver, twisted them together, bent them against one another, rubbing them with the magnet and with the leather and with anything else that he could hit on. Gradually, he had no room for all of this in his house; and then he threw it outside the door.

9

One evening, he and his disciple were sitting on the bench before the wall, tired with their fruitless labours. They gazed at the sun until it went down. Then twilight fell upon the land.

Two-Legs looked at a fat old toad who came crawling from under the threshold.

He moved his legs heavily and looked with his frightened eyes at Two-Legs and wondered if he meant him any harm. Then he crawled on ... under some wire that lay there. And, as the toad touched the wire, he jumped as if he had been struck a blow.

Two-Legs saw it, for he saw everything. He saw how the toad again touched the wires and again jumped. He stooped down and saw that it was copper-wire and zinc-wire. He saw that the toad jumped highest when he touched both wires. He caught the toad and held him in his hand and put both the wires to him. The toad gave a start. And, every time he touched him with the wire, he started afresh.

Then he let the toad go and remained sitting for a long time with the copper-wire and the zinc-wire in his hand and gazed before him, plunged in thought. Then he said:

“Come, let us go in.”

“Yes, it’s time for bed,” said the disciple. “It’s quite dark.”

“It’s time for work,” said Two-Legs. “To-night a light has been kindled for me, brighter than any before.”

He told the disciple what he had noticed and explained his thought to him:

“It was the electric spirit,” he said. “I think it was the toad’s moist skin that made him show himself. Now we will experiment with copper and zinc.”

He took a glass and filled if half with water and put into it a small piece of zinc and a small piece of copper. Then he fastened a slender wire to the zinc, let the wire stand up in a wide curve and fastened the other end to the copper:

“What shall we put into the water?” he said. “There is sulphur and there is lime and there are a thousand things, in the toad’s skin.... The question is how to hit upon just the right one.”

He experimented patiently. When he put a piece of sulphur into the water, it began to bubble round the zinc.

“Look, look, now the water is jumping just as the toad did!” he said.

He grasped the wire and felt that it was getting hot. Breathlessly, he dropped it and stared at the whole apparatus:

“That’s it, that’s it,” he said and talked quite low, in his excitement. “Wait a bit, now, and see.”

He filed the wire quite thin in one place:

“Feel it,” he said. “It’s glowing.”

The disciple did so and quickly drew back his fingers, for he had burnt himself. Two-Legs stood and stared. Then he cut the wire; and the bubbling in the water stopped at once and the thin piece became cold again. He held the two cut ends together; and, the moment they touched each other, the water bubbled and the wire grew hot. He tried it time after time; and, each time, the same thing happened.

“At last, at last, I have found it,” he said.

He sat for a long time silent, with his face buried in his hands, overcome with emotion. The disciple did not quite understand it, but dared not ask. And, in a little while, Two-Legs himself explained it to him:

“Look here, look here!” he said; and his eyes beamed as they had never beamed before. “Don’t you see that I am making electricity in this little glass? I am making it and it’s here. The wonderful force, the force of the lightning, flows along the wire. I cut the wire and the current is interrupted. I connect it again and the force flows once more. Praise be to the loathsome toad who set my thoughts travelling in the right direction!”

“I don’t see the lightning,” said the disciple.

“You shall see it,” said Two-Legs.

He put a little piece of charcoal at each end of the wire where he had cut it. Then he put out the light in the room and brought the two charcoal tips together. Then they both saw that the charcoal glowed and gave a faint light.

“Do you see that? Do you see that?” cried Two-Legs, exultantly. “I have my thunder-cloud in this little glass: there’s the lightning for you. It only shines faintly as yet, but it is easily made stronger. I can put a thousand thunder-clouds together and you shall see how bright the light becomes. I can put two thousand together and you shall see how strong the electric power is: stronger than the wind, stronger than the steam; there is not a weight it cannot raise, not a wheel it cannot turn. Look, look, I have caught the lightning and imprisoned it in this little glass! I am lord of the mighty electric spirit: he will have to serve me like the ox and the horse, like the wind and Steam!”

He ran and flung open the door. The night was past and it was morning. He shouted till his voice rang over the valley. The people heard and woke and sprang from their beds:

“Father Two-Legs is calling,” they said to one another. “Let us go to his house and hear what he has to tell us.”

They hurried from every side; and Two-Legs stood up, with his great white beard, and told them the marvellous thing that had happened:

“I have caught the electric spirit ... the mysterious, mighty spirit,” he said. “I can produce as strong a current of his immense force as I please and I can carry it whither I please, even to the end of the earth, along a thin wire. I can kindle the lightning, so that it shines calmly and gently, and put it out and kindle it again as easily as I snap my fingers.”

They listened open-mouthed and stared, while he showed them and explained it to them:

“The electric spirit is my captive,” he said. “I have imprisoned him in this little glass and compelled him to obey me. I give him to you; and in him you have a servant whose like you have never known. He will alter the face of the whole earth. If those who died a hundred years ago were to rise again ten years hence, they would not know the world in which they had lived.”

The fools laughed and mocked at him, as was their wont. But the clever ones asked Two-Legs to explain it again and again and never tired of listening to him. At last, they all went home and began to enquire further into the matter, while Two-Legs went into his house and shut his door and wondered what would come next.

10

Out in the world it happened as he had said.

The electric spirit served mankind as none other had ever done. Electric light glowed in every house. Electric cars ran in every direction at lightning speed. The electric telegraph carried men’s messages from one end of the world to the other.

Soon there was nothing left that Electricity could not do more easily and better.

TWO-LEGS’ FUTURE

1

Two-Legs still lives.

He will not die as long as the world exists.

He lives now in one country and now in another. No one knows for certain where he is; and there are not many who think of him in the ordinary course of things. Only very few have seen him, but those who have will never forget him either, so old is he and venerable, so clever and radiant his eyes.

He is the same that he always was.

In the beginning, he supplied himself with food and clothes, shelter against the weather and defence against his foes. He built himself huts and houses, killed some of the wild animals and tamed others. He taught his children to sow and reap. Misfortune overtook him and he conquered it. His descendants multiplied and filled the earth.

Since then he conquered the wind and Steam and Electricity. He bound them and gave them to man for his servants. And man trained them, even as he had trained the horse and the ox and the dog.

The steam-engine gives bread to many times more people than all the beasts of the field. The electric spirit does a thousand times more tricks in man’s service than the horse or the dog.

In the evening, when Two-Legs sits outside his house, the voices speak to him as before:

“Two-Legs ... the vanquisher of the animals ... the lord of the ox and the horse and the dog ... the strongest of all creatures.”

“Two-Legs ... who conquered the wind and took him into his service.... He made him turn the mill ... made him carry the ship over the sea.”

“Two-Legs ... the lord of Steam.... He forced him into his engine and told him to do the tasks which men put him to.”

“Two-Legs, the wisest, the strongest.... He explored the lightning and bound it.... He compelled it to draw the greatest weights and to shine calmly and gently in men’s small rooms and to carry their messages from one end of the world to the other.”

Two-Legs listened to the voices, but only for a moment. He was examining a piece of metal which he held in his hand and into which he had been long and secretly enquiring:

“Look,” he said to the young man who was now his pupil. “I wish I knew what the queer rays are that come out of this substance. It shall be called Radium; that means the thing that beams. I will search until I know its nature. Who knows what secret forces it conceals and what benefits it can perform for mankind?”

2

Two-Legs explored the new force.

The world round about him went its course. Each year brought new incidents, new discoveries, new wealth and new happiness. Two-Legs paid no heed. He sat with his radium and would not let it go until he knew it through and through.

There were clever people who knew he must succeed some time and who waited eagerly and gladly for him to make mankind the master of a new power, mightier, perhaps, than any of those which he had yet conquered.

There were fools who said that it was all very well with Steam and Electricity and the rest. They could understand that. But this new thing here was quite senseless and absurd. Besides, one must not tempt God. There were mysteries in nature which mankind should never seek to explore. There was a limit to what was allowed to men; and the man who overstepped that limit was either a fool or a presumptuous person who ought to be locked up or punished.

Two-Legs listened just as little to them now as he had done in the old days.

Their folly was the same now as then. What they saw before their eyes and felt with their hands they believed in. The new thing which was in its first stages, they mocked at and condemned.

But, sometimes, a man would come to Two-Legs with his little son, so that the boy might see the wisest man in the world. Then, if he had the luck to find words that could divert Two-Legs’ attention from his work, Two-Legs would look up and fix his steady glance on the boy, lay his hand on the boy’s head and say:

“Do not grow up to be a fool, my lad. The fool is he who judges what he does not understand.”

_Bristol: Burleigh Ltd., at the Burleigh Press._